Executive SummaryInventory and Assessment of Human Remains From the Salinas Pueblos of Gran Quivira and Quarai, New Mexico, In the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Region: Southwest
Associated Cultures: Acoma, Apache, Caddo, Hopi, Isleta, Jemez, Kiowa, Piro-Manso-Tiwa, Pueblo, Sandia, Santo Domingo, Taos, Wichita, Ysleta del Sur, Zuni2002
In compliance with 20 U.S.C. 80q et seq. (Public Law 101-185), the National Museum of the American Indian Act, this report provides an inventory and assessment of human remains from the Salinas pueblo ruins of Gran Quivira and Quarai, New Mexico, in the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Smithsonian Institution (SI). The repatriation request was submitted on February 28, 2000, by the federally recognized tribe of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Tigua Indian Reservation of Texas "on its own behalf and as lead tribe for the Hopi, Isleta, New Mexico, Jemez, Santo Domingo, Taos and Zuni Pueblos and the Kiowa and Mescalero Tribes."

Supporting the claim, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo referenced a cultural affiliation study prepared by Elizabeth A. Brandt (1997) of the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, for the National Park Service (NPS), other records of the NPS, and consultations among tribal and governmental organizations sponsored by the NPS in Albuquerque in November 1999, and March 2000. In addition to the tribes listed in the Ysleta del Sur repatriation request, the Albuquerque meetings were attended by representatives of the Pueblo of Acoma, the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma, the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes of Oklahoma, the Piro-Manso-Tiwa of Las Cruces (Pueblo of San Juan de Guadalupe, federally unrecognized), the Museum of New Mexico, the NPS (Santa Fe and Mountainair Offices), the NMNH Repatriation Office, and the Smithsonian Institution Repatriation Review Committee

This report documents the remains of an estimated 50 individuals represented by 44 catalog numbers in the collection of the NMNH. Four individuals in three catalog numbers are from Gran Quivira and 46 individuals in 41 catalog numbers are from Quarai. The skeletal remains from Gran Quivira were collected during two brief expeditions in the area, one in 1869 and another in 1876. Remains from Quarai were collected during excavations sponsored by the Museum of New Mexico between 1934 and 1940. No funerary objects associated with the remains from Gran Quivira or Quarai are held by the NMNH. In addition, commingled skeletal remains were found during the documentation of eight catalog numbers from Quarai. The commingled remains cannot be unequivocally assigned to any of the 44 identified individuals from Quarai and may represent elements of these individuals or additional individuals.

Archaeological evidence indicates continuous prehispanic occupancy of the Salinas pueblos beginning by at least the early fourteenth century and lasting until their final abandonment before the end of the seventeenth century. Available site records suggest this period corresponds to the time when the Salinas remains at the NMNH were originally interred. Museum records, ethnographic studies, oral historical statements, and Spanish colonial documents, as well as statements made in consultation with tribal representatives at the NPS meetings in Albuquerque, were examined for this report. These data indicate that during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, migrants from Gran Quivira and Quarai, abandoning the Salinas district, joined relatives at different pueblos along the Rio Grande and elsewhere in the greater Southwest. The 1670s migrants from the Salinas pueblos joined the pueblos of Isleta and Sandia in the Tiguex Province, which corresponds to modern-day Bernalillo-Albuquerque area. Migrants from the Salinas pueblos also moved into Piro villages, which were then located along the Rio Grande just south of Isleta and west of the Salinas district. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 members of the Isleta and Sandia pueblos, as well as groups from the Rio Grande Piro communities, both of which had absorbed migrants from the Salinas region, moved south with the Spanish. They joined Piro and Tiwa communities then being established in the El Paso-Juarez area of Texas and Mexico. Salinas pueblo descendants, among others, helped found the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and other communities on both sides of the Rio Grande. After the revolt, migrants from the Rio Grande communities, with ties of cultural affiliation to the Salinas pueblos, established a community in the Anthony-Las Cruces area of New Mexico, which today is known as Piro-Manso-Tiwa. Residents of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and the Piro-Manso-Tiwa Community of Las Cruces that settled in the El Paso-Juarez and Las Cruces areas maintained cultural contacts with their Tiwa relatives at the re-founded pueblos of Isleta and Sandia in central New Mexico after the Spanish re-conquest of New Mexico in 1692. These contacts have been maintained to the present day.

Strong relationships of cultural affiliation, at the level of shared group identity, links the Pueblos of Ysleta del Sur, Isleta, Sandia and the federally unrecognized Piro-Manso-Tiwa Community of Las Cruces to the residents of Salinas pueblos of Grand Quivira and Quarai by historic, linguistic and traditional sources. The Piro-Manso-Tiwa Community of Las Cruces is not federally recognized and can participate in the repatriation process only with the support of culturally affiliated federally recognized tribes. Following Brandt (1997), the federally recognized Pueblos of Ysleta del Sur, Isleta, and Sandia are considered the primary ties of cultural affiliation. More distant relationships can also be traced between the Pueblos of Hopi, Zuni, Jemez, Santo Domingo and Acoma based on archaeological data, linguistic relationships, traditional histories and other forms of evidence. Finally, relationships also exist between the Apache, Kiowa, Wichita and Caddo on the southern Plains with the residents of Gran Quivira and Quarai. The relationships with the Hopi, Zuni, Jemez, Santo Domingo and Acoma in the southwest and the Apache, Kiowa, Wichita and Caddo in the Plains are not at the level of shared group identity and are not sufficient to support a finding of culturally affiliation with the Salinas remains considered in this report. Cultural affiliation means that there is a relationship of shared group identity that can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically to a present-day tribe(s) based on geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, linguistic, folklore, oral tradition, historic evidence or other information.

Based on a preponderance of available evidence, it was recommended that the NMNH offer for return the remains from Gran Quivira and Quarai at the NMNH to the pueblos of Ysleta del Sur, Isleta, and Sandia. During a consultation on the cultural affiliation of Salinas Monument, the other federally recognized tribes at the consultation verbally agreed that Ysleta del Sur would take the lead in the repatriation process and act on behalf of the group as a whole. All tribes who did participated in earlier consultations on the cultural affiliation of Salinas Monument were notified of the findings contained in this report and allowed a reasonable period for comment.

Repatriation UpdateThe remains from Gran Quivira and Quarai were repatriated to the Pueblo of Ysleta del Sur on October 19, 2007, with the support of the Pueblo of Isleta and the Pueblo of Sandia.